ZUCHS!
or
The Hydra in the Metadata
It has recently become popular to blame Facebook and/or YouTube for “Censoring” content. In this observation these complaints boil down to: “Right Wing” pundits saying Social Media is “Left Wing” and “Left Wing” pundits intoning the opposite. And, yes, I have literally seen both arguments on Facebook, YouTube, and the TV machine. Each side had some “study” which they’d quoted as authoritative which resulted in censorship. Studies which just incidentally were usually based on undisclosed numbers of people.
Perhaps, though, the root problem is the unimaginable volume of ‘numbers’ that have to be sorted through. According to available sources, as of June 2021 Facebook has 2.85 Billion active users worldwide and is translated into multiple languages. There are an estimated 55,000 Posts per second to Facebook and 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s a lot of the ones & zeros which create those posts.
Also, it might be suggested none of current problems are particularly new. Following is from my Brazil Times article published October 28 2013. For any reader in the know, yes, it was Nathan edited and approved.
The Facebook Slowdown
The single most common complaint we’ve heard in 10+ years at Computer Central in Brazil is that a computer is running “slow”. There are probably as many reasons why this could be as there are complainers. In the past year or so, however, when people come in or call complaining their computer is “slow” what they actually mean is “my Facebook is slow”.
“Social Media” is the politically correct buzzword, but Facebook is the Godzilla in the room. It was once reported that the average “facebooker” returns to their account seven times a day.
Nathan, who is the real geek here, gives a really good explanation why Facebook is always going to run “slow”. Has something to do with the mathematical equations programmers have to do, or some such.
Here’s why Facebook is slow: There’s a whole bunch of stuff for it to do.
When you open to your account your computer is going out somewhere in never-never land looking for Facebook’s servers. Those servers have to figure out who you are and which page you want.
As soon as they do this they need to pull up the advertising which fits your profile and/or scan your computer to find out what things you may have ordered online. If I were to load Facebook on my office computer, for example, I’d get advertising for office supplies. Opening the same account on our home computer gets all kinds of old folks advertising.
Only after finding out who you are and what advertising to load, do they dump all this stuff on your screen. Then, when you scroll down the page the whole process starts over.
All this happens as millions of ones & zeros transfer back and forth every millisecond.
No wonder it is “slow” -- between your computer and Facebook there is a whole bunch of stuff for it to do. It can help if your PC has enough RAM, but that’s another subject...
Whatever you think of “social media” it has changed your life because it has changed the world. And, it is going cause problems and it is going to run “slow”.
2021 Postscript
In ancient Greek mythology the Hydra was a serpent-like monster with many heads. The fable being when one head was cut off, two more would inevitably grow back in its place. May it be herewith respectfully submitted that maybe, just maybe, the more they try to solve the problems of Social Media the more problems social media will ‘grow’. And maybe, just maybe, Mark is doing the best he can to slay the Hydra he somewhat unintentionally incarnated.
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